100 YEARS BAUHAUS

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16

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DOCOMOMO Germany

M. Melenhorst, U. Pottgiesser, T. Kellner, F. Jaschke (EDs.)

What interest do we take in Modern Movement today?

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March 2019 I Berlin

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RMB Conference

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information can be found at http://dnb.ddb.de.

Publisher Hochschule OWL (University of Applied Sciences)

DOCOMOMO Deutschland e.V.

Editors Michel Melenhorst, Uta Pottgiesser, Theresa Kellner, Franz Jaschke Reviewers

Layout and Editing Anna Dong, Susann Kreplin

Cover image Prellerhaus, Studio Building of Bauhaus

Dessau, licence-free

The editors worked intensively to collect all copyrights of pictures/graphs. In the unforeseen case of using unauthorized pictures/graphs the editors ask to get in contact with them.

© 2019 Hochschule OWL - Detmolder Schule für Architektur und Innenarchitektur This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, recitation, roadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in other ways, and storage in data banks. For any kind of use, permission of the copyright owner must be obtained.

100 YEARS BAUHAUS

16

^th

DOCOMOMO Germany

M. Melenhorst, U. Pottgiesser, T. Kellner, F. Jaschke (EDs.)

What interest do we take in Modern Movement today?

1

^st

March 2019 I Berlin

3

^rd

RMB Conference

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Index

Preface 11

Conference Program 15

Keynotes 21

1.1 Theory and Politics | Michel Melenhorst 23 The Reconceptualization of Modernist Structures in Post-Socialist

Rural Regions: Case-studies from Brandenburg, Germany |

Christoph Muth, Emily Bereskin 29 The Afterlife of Fascist Architecture and Town Planning. The Case of Italy’s Pontine Plain and Colonial Libya | Vittoria Capresi 33 Are we Modern in a Liquid World? A Latin American Perspective |

João Pedro Otoni Cardoso, Fernanda Freitas, Carlos Eduardo

Ribeiro Silverira 49

1.2 Register | Ana Tostões 61

Change Management in Conservation of Modern Architectural Heritage in Tehran | Somayeh Fadaei Nezhad Bahramjerdi,

Hoda Sadrolashrafi, Hadi Naderi, Pirouz Hanachi 65 Freak Architecture: Australia and Classical Modernism |

Deborah Ascher Barnstone 79 Werner March and the Design of the Cairo Stadium | Florian Seidel 93 Modernization of Dona Leonor Secondary School: Contributes for

good practices | Francisco T. Bastos, Ana Fernandes 107

1.3 Bildung und Theorie | Alex Dill 111

Programm wird Bau | Katja Szymczak 115 Framing Bauhaus – The Reception of the Housing Estate

Dessau–Törten | Sophie Stackmann 125 Das Projekt bau1haus - Vom Bauhaus in die Welt | Kaija Voss,

Jean Molitor 137

2.1 Education | Gonçalo Canto Moniz 151

Cathedrals of Modernity. The legacy of Piero Portaluppi’s

electric architecture | Sara di Resta, Elena Lemma, Davide Tassera 155 TAC Office Rome. From interviews with the protagonists. | Alessandra Capanna, Susanne Clemente 159 Architecture of Modern Schools in the 1930's Ankara -

Extension to Atatürk High School as a design studio exercise |

Haluk Zelef 169 Exploring the City Through the Eye of the Modernist

Photographer | Jülide Akşiyote Görür 187

2.2 Technology | Uta Pottgiesser 203

The Conservation Challenge of Architectural Glass in Modernist

Churches | Zsuzsanna Böröcz 207 The Danish Window. Key Element of Modern Architecture, Site of

new Themes and Techniques. | Eva Storgaard 211

‘New Architecture’ in Use. Mapping Portuguese Modern

Secondary Schools. | Patrícia Lourenco, Alexandra Alegre 229 Technological Value Concept for Modernist Residences in Turkey | Su Kardelen Erdogan, Aslihan Ünlü Tavil 249 2.3 Bildung und Register | Monika Markgraf 265 Visuelle Module Moholy-Nagy – Innovation inspiriert von dem

pädagogischen Nachlass ungarischer Meister des Bauhauses |

Andrea Kárpáti 269 Otto Rudolf Salvisberg (1882-1940) – Architekt der Moderne |

Thomas Steigenberger 283 Bauhaus in Berlin? Die Entwicklungsgeschichte der Kantgarage |

Thomas Katzke 297

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Preservation of the METU Faculty of Architecture | Ayşen Savaş,

Ipek Gürsel Dino 319 Teaching Modernism – A Study on Architectural Education in

Hungary (1945–60) | Rita Karácsony, Zorán Vukoszávlyev 331 3.2 Standardisation and Rationalisation | Els De Vos&Maria Leus 345 Bauhaus Worldwide Shift | Ana Tostões 349 The Minimum Dwelling: New Belgrade Flat and Reflections on the Minimum Today | Anica Dragutinovic, Uta Pottgiesser,

Michel Melenhorst 353 Paulo Mendes da Rocha: Prototype and Housing |

Fernando Delgado Páez 367

3.3 Discurs and Detail | Luise Schier 379

Late modern beyond the icons. Industrialisierte Alltagsarchitektur nach 1960 erforschen und denkmalkundlich inventarisieren |

Mark Escherich 383 The Graves Laura Perls and Albert Mendel in Berlin-Weissensee |

Nina Nedeljkov, Pedro Moreira 397 Die Bauhausküchen – bis heute mehr als nur „Bauhausstil“ |

Max Korinsky 401

The Vertical Village | Sanne Kunst, Sanne Louwerens 419 Restore the old Promise of Modernism | Ellen Mollen, Anne Wisse, Pieternel Van Steenbrugge 425 4.2 Bildung und Theorie | Thomas Ludwig 431 Haus am Horn – Its Experimental Spirit | Moe Omiya 435 A case study on ‘revealing creativitiy through craftsmanship’ |

Çiler Buket Tosun 441 Modern Socialist Landscape? The 1960s planning concept of

‘rural settlement centers’ | Fridtjof Florian Dossin 447 The Zeitgeist | Zaida Garcia Requejo, José Santatecla Fayos,

Laura Lizondo Sevilla 451

5.0 Documentary movie 457

Introduction: DOCOMOMO Deutschland 461

Introduction: Reuse of Modernist Buildings

Design tools for a sustainable transformation (RMB) 463

Introduction: HS OWL 471

Editors 473

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Preface

Prof. ir. Michel Melenhorst; Prof. Dr.-Ing. Uta Pottgiesser

The International Conference in Berlin takes the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus as an opportunity to discuss the significance of modernity in the 21st century: ‘What interest do we take in the Modern Movement today? The conference focus lies on the concepts, visions, and impulses emanating from Modern Movement and how they can be related to today’s social, economic, cultural and in particular creative issues.

The 2019 DOCOMOMO Germany Conference in Berlin continues the tradition of the Karlsruhe DOCOMOMO Germany Conference and is this year co-organised by the Hochschule Ostwestfalen- Lippe and

‘RMB‘, an initiative to design an educational framework of common definitions on a European level on the reuse of Modernist Buildings.

This cooperation resulted in a new conference format: a combination of invited keynote speakers and selected scientific lectures.

The keynote speakers, David Chipperfield, Fernando Romero and Wiel Arets report from their respective professional practices in architecture, research and education on their involvement with Modern Movement architecture and modernism in general.

In the call for papers we posed the following questions:

Are the social, spatial and constructional concepts formulated by modern movement and post-war modernism still sustainable today?

What role do cultural and climatic conditions play in the preservation, renovation, and transformation of spaces, buildings, and modern movement sites?

How can the basic ideas of classical modernism be continued 100 years later and thus contribute to solving current challenges?

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What contribution can be expected from academic and professional education, and which learning formats are suitable for this?

The contributions at the conference, both from the keynote speakers as from the papers presented in 9 paper sessions and two poster sessions, show an overwhelming landscape of positions and opinions, from different professional and geographical backgrounds. Originally the sessions were organized according to the different workgroup topics in Docomomo:

Education + Theory (about programs, concepts, and approaches) Register (about buildings, typologies or architects/planners)

Urbanism + Landscape (about building ensembles, outdoor spaces, and policies)

Technology (via components, materials or techniques) Interior Design (about interiors, extensions, and atmospheres) However, themes such as politics, mass housing, and standardi- zation and actually re-use have become increasingly important in the discussion on the documentation and conservation of modern movement. To make clear the shift in the debate and the topics that are brought in at the conference we decided to rename some of the sessions. By this renaming, we already partly reveal some of the answers to the conference question: ‘What interest do we take in the Modern Movement today?

In this conference proceedings, you will find the complete program and the papers. For some of the papers, you will only find the abstracts We selected them for a special Docomomo Germany publication, to be published after the Conference. Also the Keynotes lectures you will not find in the Proceedings. In a special issue of Docomomo Inter- national Journal, dedicated to RMB and this Conference theme, we will publish transcripts of the lectures and the podium discussion, as well as interviews with the three Keynote speakers.

Enjoy the conferences and the proceedings

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Uta Pottgiesser, OWL University of Applied Sciences, Vice Chair Docomomo Germany

Prof. ir. Michel Melenhorst, OWL University of Applied Sciences, Coordinator RMB

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Conference Program

PROGRAMM | FRIDAY, 01.03.2019 8.30 Reception / Registration

9.00 Welcoming & Introduction | Room: Saal Franz Jaschke, Chair Docomomo Deutschland

Michel Melenhorst, OWL University of Applied Sciences, RMB 9.15 Keynote | Skin and Bones. Restoring Mies van der Rohe’s

Neue Nationalgalerie | Room: Saal

David Chipperfield, David Chipperfield Architects, London 09.45 Coffee break | Room: Foyer

10.15 Parallel sessions 1 1.1 Theory and Politics

Moderation: Michel Melenhorst | Room: Saal

The Reconceptualization of Moder- nist Structures in Post-Socialist Rural Regions: Case-studies from Brandenburg, Germany | Christoph Muth

The Afterlife of Fascist Architecture and Town Planning. The Case of Italy’s Pontine Plain and Colonial Libya | Vittoria Capresi Are we Modern in a Liquid World? A Latin American Perspective | João Pedro Otoni Cardoso

1.2 Register

Moderation: Ana Tostões | Room: Foyer

Change Management in Conservation of Modern Architectural Heritage in Tehran | Somayeh Fadaei Nezhad Bahramjerdi, Hoda Sadrolashrafi

Freak Architecture: Australia and Classical Modernism | Deborah Ascher Barnstone

Werner March and the Design of the Cairo Stadium | Florian Seidel Modernization of Dona Leonor Secondary School: Contributes for good practices | Francisco T. Bastos

1.3 Bildung und Theorie (Deutsch | German) Moderation: Alex Dill | Room: S1

Programm wird Bau | Katja Szymczak

Framing Bauhaus – The Reception of the Housing Estate Dessau –Törten | Sophie Stackmann

Das Projekt bau1haus - Vom Bauhaus in die Welt | Kaija Voss 11.15 Panel discussion

11.30 Coffee break | Room: Foyer 12.00 Parallel sessions | 2

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2.1 Education

Moderation: Gonçalo Canto Moniz | Room: Saal Cathedrals of Modernity. The legacy of Piero Portaluppi’s electric architecture | Sara di Resta, Elena Lemma, Davide Tassera Architecture of Modern Schools in the 1930's Ankara - Extension to Atatürk High School as a design studio exercise | Haluk Zelef

Exploring the City Through the Eye of the Modernist Photographer | Jülide Akşiyote Görür

2.2 Technology

Moderation: Uta Pottgiesser | Room: Foyer

The Conservation Challenge of Architectural Glass in Modernist Churches | Zsuzsanna Böröcz

The Danish Window. Key Element of Modern Architecture, Site of new Themes and Techniques. | Eva Storgaard

‘New Architecture’ in Use. Mapping Portuguese Modern Secondary Schools. | Patrícia Lourenco, Alexandra Alegre

Technological Value Concept for Modernist Residences in Turkey | Su Kardelen Erdogan

2.3 Bildung und Register (Deutsch | German) Moderation: Monika Markgraf | Room: S1

Visuelle Module Moholy-Nagy – Innovation inspiriert von dem pädagogischen Nachlass ungarischer Meister des Bauhauses | Andrea Kárpáti

Otto Rudolf Salvisberg (1882-1940) – Architekt der Moderne | Thomas Steigenberger

Bauhaus in Berlin? Die Entwicklungsgeschichte der Kantgarage | Thomas Katzke

13.00 Panel discussion

13.15 Lunch break | Room: Foyer

14.15 Keynote | Mexican Modernism | Room: Saal Fernando Romero, fr-ee, New York, Miami, Mexico-City 15.00 Break

15.15 Parallel sessions | 3 3.1 Education

Moderation: Aslihan Ünlü Tavil | Room: Saal

Walter Gropius and Operative History: An Architectural Palimpsest | Jasmine Benyamin

Constituting an Archive: Documentation as a Tool for the Preservation of the METU Faculty of Architecture | Ayşen Savaş Teaching Modernism – A Study on Architectural Education in Hungary (1945–60) | Rita Karácsony

3.2 Standardisation and Rationalisation Moderation: Els De Vos | Room: Foyer Bauhaus Worldwide Shift | Ana Tostões

The Minimum Dwelling: New Belgrade Flat and Reflections on the Minimum Today | Anica Dragutinovic

Paulo Mendes da Rocha: Prototype and Housing | Fernando Delgado Páez

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4.2 Education and Theory

Moderation: Thomas Ludwig | Room: S1 Haus am Horn – Its Experimental Spirit | Moe Omiya

A case study on ‘revealing creativitiy through craftsmanship’ | Çiler Buket Tosun

Modern Socialist Landscape? The 1960s planning concept of

‘rural settlement centers’ | Fridtjof Florian Dossin The Zeitgeist | Zaida Garcia Requejo

17.50 Documentary movie | Off Season, 2018 | Room: Saal Director: Andrea Kalinová

18.30 Conference dinner | Room: Foyer 20.00 Keynote | Interventions | Room: Saal

Wiel Arets, Wiel Arets Architects, Amsterdam 20.45 Podium discussion | Room: Saal

Moderation: Tim Rieniets

Wiel Arets Wiel Arets Architects, keynote speaker Fernando Romero Office fr-ee, keynote speaker

Ana Tostões President of Docomomo International Regina Bittner Deputy Director of the Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau

Jörg Haspel President of ICOMOS | Former State Conservator of the Office for Monuments Berlin

The discussion will be moderated by Tim Rieniets (Professor at the Leibniz University Hannover).

21.30 Informal Conclusion

EXCURSIONS | SATURDAY, 02.03.2019

The event will be accompanied by guided excursions to sites of the Modern Movement in Berlin. The group tours will be held in the morning and afternoon of 02.03.2019. You can choose between the following excursions:

Excursion 1 | Siedlungen der Moderne | Berlin – 3,0 h 10:30 – 13:30 – group 1

13:00 – 16:00 – group 2

Excursion 2 | Museum – Neue Nationalgalerie

by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, design and realisation, 1962-68, refurbishment by David Chipperfield Architects, 2012-2019 – 1,5 h

9:00 – 10:30 – group 3 10:30 – 12:00 – group 4 12:00 – 13:30 – group 5 13:30 – 15:00 – group 6 15:00 – 16:30 – group 7 3.3 Diskurs und Detail (Deutsch | German)

Moderation: Luise Schier | Room: S1

Late modern beyond the icons. Industrialisierte Alltagsarchitektur nach 1960 erforschen und denkmalkundlich inventarisieren | Mark Escherich

The Graves Laura Perls and Albert Mendel in Berlin-Weissensee | Nina Nedeljkov

Die Bauhausküchen – bis heute mehr als nur „Bauhausstil“ | Max Korinsky

16.15 Panel discussion

16.30 Coffee break | Room: Foyer

17.00 Parallel poster presentations | Pecha Kucha | 4

4.1 Housing reloaded | Moderation: Ana Nikezic | Room: Saal Unforeseen Impulses of Modernism: The case of New Belgrade | Anica Dragutinovic

Unforeseen Impulses of Modernism: The case of New Belgrade_

Block 23 | Anica Dragutinovic

The Vertical Village | Sanne Kunst, Sanne Louwerens

Restore the old Promise of Modernism | Ellen Mollen, Anne Wisse, Pieternel Van Steenbrugge

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Photo | © Jan Bitter Photo | fr-ee.org/team Photo | davidchipperfield.com/people

Fernando Romero is a Mexico city-based architect, recognized as one of the leading architects of his generation. He was named as a Global Leader of Tomorrow at the World Economic Forum in 2002.

His several accolades include the Bauhaus Award and the ‘Best of the Best’ Red Dot Award. His office fr ee are involved in a wide range of educational and cultural activities. One of his projects is ‚Regenerati- on‘, which aim it is to restore selected pieces of modern Mexi can architecture, preserves the culture and creates awareness about the role of architecture and design in Mexico. Fernando Romero will talk about his works and its relation with modernism and the Mexican context.

David Chipperfield established David Chipperfield Architects in 1985. He was Professor of Architecture at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Stuttgart from 1995 to 2001 and Norman R.

Foster Visiting Professor of Architectural Design at Yale University in 2011, and has taught and lectured worldwide at schools of architecture in Austria, Italy, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In 2012 David Chipperfield curated the 13th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale.

David Chipperfield will report on the preservation and transformation of Mies van der Rohes Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, a project his office is currently working on. He will talk about the conceptual and constructive challenges that one faces when restoring one of the icons of moderni ty.

Wiel Arets is a Dutch architect, teacher and pu blicist. From 2012 he was dean of the Illinois In stitute of Technology‘s College of Architec- ture (IIT CoA) in Chicago. He followed in the footsteps of Mies van der Rohe, who was Bauhaus Director from 1930 to 1933 and, after his exile in the USA in 1938, appointed Dean of the future IIT. Under Arets as dean, the College has revitalized itself and restructured its curriculum, which now culminates in the innovative ‚horizontal studio‘ - a school-wide educational and research laboratory in which stu dents from all degree programs (B.Arch, M.Arch. and PhD) work together. In his speech, Wiel Arets will com ment on the significance of modernity today and will show his work and reflect on interventions in modernist architecture and urban conditions.

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Notes

Michel Melenhorst

Professor Contextual Design Hochschule Ostwestfalen Lippe

Michel Melenhorst studied architecture at Delft Technical University and worked for Wiel Arets (1991-1995) and OMA (1995-1999) before starting his own office in 1999. In 2005, he became a partner in DAAD Architects. In 2012, he switched to Detmold Germany to hold the chair for Contextual Design at the Hochschule Ostwestfalen Lippe, where he coordinates the Master’s in Architecture.

Michel Melenhorst has extensive experience in teaching and lecturing at institutions such as TU Delft, Design Academy Eindhoven, Lasalle University Bogota, HCU Hamburg, Arhus school of Architecture, University of Antwerp and K´Arts Seoul. Michel Melenhorst is a member of Docomomo international and is active in Docomomo Deutschland Workgroup education. At the HS-OWL he is coordina- ting the Master in Architecture, he is a member of the Researchgroup Urban Lab and co-organises the Universities annual workshop week and Conference ´Detmolder Räume´

Since 2016 he leads ´RMB´, an europewide intiative to start a specialized, two years master studies on reuse of modernist buildings.

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Theory and Politics

Prof. ir. Michel Melenhorst

The theme of this conference – the Modern Movement – is a term usually reserved for architecture and design-related fields. But of course, besides the well-known domains of modernism in the cultural disciplines, the movement permeated all layers and niches in society. Modernism reached a wide range of fields, such as politics, technology, medicine, religion and agriculture, to name but a few.

Research into cross-links between different sectors in society under the common denominator of modernism is of increasing importance because these relations are of significance in defining the values that we attribute to our modernist heritage. The combination of politics and modernism is perhaps the most obvious but certainly also one of the most volatile relations to be scrutinized. The well-known iconography of modernist architecture communicates entirely different underlying messages depending on the regime that adopted, used and adapted it for its own purposes and goals.

The determination of heritage values, and subsequently the way to use, restore, reuse and present this Modern Movement heritage depends strongly on both the old, historical and the contemporary links between politics, society and the Modern Movement.

In her paper entitled ´The afterlife of Fascist Building´, Vittoria Capresi writes about the rural, colonial settlements built in the Italian Fascist era in Italy and its overseas colonies. They were an important tool, used very deliberately by the fascist regime to spread its ideology and show its power through an intentionally adapted modernist architecture and urban design.

Emily Bereskin and Christoph Muth present the current state of their research into the history and future of the LPG (Landwirtschaftliche Produktionsgenossenschaft), an Agricultural Production Cooperative comprising large, collectivised farms in East Germany that arose under the communist regime in the German Democratic Republic.

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The authors of these two papers are researchers in a collabo- rative research project called ´MODSCAPES´. The interest of MODSCAPES lies in the ´Modernist rural development schemes, pivotal to Nation- and State-building policies, and to the modernization of the countryside. They provided a testing ground for the ideas of scientists, architects, engineers, planners, landscape architects and artists, who converged around a shared challenge.´ (https://

modscapes.eu)

If and how Modernist Movement heritage can continue to exist and function under neoliberalism, populist or (semi)autocratic regimes and under strong attacks by conservative voices is another aspect of the relationship between the Modern Movement and politics.

In the third paper in the session, ´Are we Modern in a Liquid World - A Latin American Perspective´ by João Pedro, Otoni, Fernanda Freitas and Carlos Eduardo Ribeiro Silveirathe, the authors describe and evaluate two case studies within the context of São Paulo and Buenos Aires. They highlight the problematic situation of modernism which, originally characterized by common goals and self-imposed missions of improvement for all, has become highly individualized, devoid of solidarity and lacking in empathy. To illustrate this dege- neration of modernism they use terminology and ideas of Sygmunt Baumann: ´solid modernism´ and ´liquid modernism´, clarifying the tremendous effects on Latin American modernist buildings and cities of these societal and political shifts and context changes between the time of realization and the current situation.

The papers in this session show that there can be no politically ´neutral position´ when reviewing and examining Modernist Movement architecture and urban design. Even an attempt at neutrality would place the authors under suspicion of partiality. All three authors, therefore, make it quite clear where they stand, which is the only good basis for an interesting debate!

Notes

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Habitat Unit of the Technische Universität Berlin

Emily Bereskin is a senior researcher at the Habitat Unit of the Technische Universität Berlin, currently working as a researcher for the MODSCAPES project. Prior, Dr. Bereskin was a DFG postdoc- toral fellow for the international graduate program “The World in the City: Berlin - New York – Toronto” at the Center for Metropolitan Studies, Technische Universität Berlin. She received her Ph.D. in Art History from Bryn Mawr College in 2012.

Habitat Unit of the Technische Universität Berlin

Christoph Muth is a doctoral candidate at Habitat Unit – Technische Universität Berlin where he also works for the EU-HERA funded project MODSCAPES. From 2015–2017 Christoph taught Architec- ture and Urban Design at the German University in Cairo. He received his Diplom in Architecture and Urban Planning from the University of Stuttgart in 2013.

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Notes

The Reconceptualization of

Modernist Structures in Post-Socialist Rural Regions: Case-studies from Brandenburg, Germany

Abstract

Through case-study and survey analysis in Brandenburg, Germany, this paper investigates the shifting conditions of modernist planning and architecture in rural regions of the former German Democratic Republic. The guiding political principles of the GDR gave equal priority to the development and settlement of rural areas as it did to urban and town planning, resulting in intense centralized efforts to construct new, modern rural centers. After 1952, and following the Soviet model, agricultural land and production processes were coll- ectivized into agricultural production collectives—Landwirtschaftliche Produktionsgenossenschaften (LPGs), reconfiguring the customary spatial arrangements of rural life. Rather than the traditional regional settlements which often paired single-family homes, gardens, farm buildings, and fields on one plot, agricultural production and processing were scaled up and consolidated into immense industrial structures. Workers were housed in multi-family apartment buildings, and rural centers were outfitted with cultural, educational, and recre- ational facilities formerly only found in towns.

Following German Reunification and the dissolution of the LPGs, the area has undergone major social, structural, and spatial changes.

Regional agricultural production has been consolidated under fewer, larger corporations; rural centers are shrinking and are facing new challenges such as long-term unemployment and aging populations.

Based on policy and site-analysis as well as interviews with local actors, this paper considers the fate and reuse of the LPG structures within this new structural transformation, analyzing the legal and economic frameworks dictating their re-use as well as the actors and strategies shaping these new spaces. The paper first considers representative examples of reuse from the categories of housing, production centers, and cultural buildings.

Full paper will be published in a separate publication series of DOCOMOMO Germany after the conference.

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Chair of International Urbanism and Design, Technical University of Berlin

Dr. Vittoria Capresi is a senior researcher at the Habitat Unit at the Technical University of Berlin since October 2016, as PI of the International European Research Project MODSCAPES — Modern Reinvention of the Rural Landscapes, a fully granted HERA project.

Vittoria studied architecture at the University of Florence and at the Technical University of Berlin before moving to Vienna at the Vienna University of Technology’s Department of History of Architecture (2002-2011). Here, she completed her doctoral dissertation on the Italian rural centers built in colonial Libya. From 2011 until 2014, she was Associate Professor in History of Architecture and Urban Design at the German University in Cairo - GUC.

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The Afterlife of Fascist

Architecture and Town Planning.

The Case of Italy's Pontine Plain and Colonial Libya.

Abstract

Which kind of afterlife can we imagine for buildings built as an expression of a political ideology? Is it possible to functionally reuse political architecture without forgetting about its original purpose?

The new towns and settlements founded under Mussolini in Italy and in colonial Libya planned for internal colonization purposes, definitively changed the landscape, contribu- ting to the building up of a political and territorial ideology.

The main message was that of power: the buildings and town planning created by the Fascist State offered the perfect background to the political propaganda, showing the absolute

bond between ideology and its physical representation.

What happened after the end of Fascism? Were the buildings related to power, stripped of their political meanings? Is it enough to decolonize the single buildings, or should the overall townscape be involved in the process?

The paper will introduce some theoretical thoughts to discuss the topic of the afterlives of fascist architecture. The idea of functional reuse will be questioned, using examples from the Italian fascism, in particular, the new settlements in the Pontine Plain and in colonial Libya.

Fig. 1: The main square of Pontinia, picture taken from the balcony of the municipal tower, former house of the Fascist party

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Fig. 2: The core of the rural settlement D’Annunzio, today al-Bayyada, Cyrenaica, Libya, designed by Florestano di Fausto, 1938. The buildings enclose the space, creating an urban theatre.

Some questions to begin with

What kind of afterlife can we imagine for buildings built as an expression of a political ideology? To what extent should we keep political memories alive while at the same time avoiding stirring up a cult of the past? How is it possible to functionally reuse political architecture?

How far can more or less neutral reuse of these buildings instigate pilgrimage? And is it possible to neutrally reuse buildings built for and by political ideology?

In a debated article in The New Yorker, Ruth Ben-Ghiat asked:

“Why are so many Fascist monuments still standing in Italy?”¹ Italy’s comfort with living with its many relics of Fascism can be explained by the continuity of the manner in which Italians have lived in the aftermath of Fascism, considering both the multitude of buildings and markers scattered over the landscapes and the long-standing presence of former Fascists in the ruling Christian Democratic bloc [which ruled immediately after the war], who never pleaded for a deep critical revision of the past.

As a matter of fact, buildings and urban interventions realized under the Ventennio fascista are now a prominent part of Italian-built inheritance.

Is it true that Fascist architecture and town planning in Italy have undergone no major critical revisionism? How far can a form of reuse which ignores the past be a solution to overcome the political identity of such buildings and so overcome the initial ideology? Or is there a way to deliberately decolonize² that architecture?

The aim of this paper is to question the idea of the “functional reuse”

of these “political buildings” as a way to critically overcome the past, using examples from the new settlements built under Fascism in the Pontine Plain and in colonial Libya. My assumption is that in the case of the new settlements it is impossible to consider the buildings as single entities and that the entire urban layout, and its intrinsic political message, should be considered as a whole and consequently decolonized as a whole.

Setting: The Case Study

³

The new towns and settlements in Italy, in particular in the Pontine Plain, were realized as part of a programme of internal colonization launched by Mussolini to revitalize under-populated areas in the peninsula by bringing families from overpopulated regions where unemployment rates were high.⁴ The reclamation of the Pontine Plain, the swampland south of Rome, is probably the best-known example:

here Mussolini carried out a gigantic project of drainage and internal colonization, starting in 1927. The project included the subdivision into agrarian parcels of 840 square kilometers of land, the realization of around 3000 farms and 18 villages, and five new towns: Littoria, Sabaudia, Pontinia, Aprilia, and Pomezia.⁵

The project of agrarian colonization in Libya started in 1932. Here the main aim was to politically control the country⁶ by distributing Italian families in the most productive coastal areas. Starting from 1932, and then in 1938 and 1939, 22 new settlements for Italian families and six for the Libyan population were built along the coasts of Tripoli- tania and Cyrenaica for newly-settled families who were required to cultivate their own plots of land.⁷

The circumstances in Libya and Italy were different but the

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Fig. 3: . Florestano di Fausto, the rural settlement Maddalena, Cyrenaica, Libya, 1938.

mechanisms used by the regime to control the territory and transform it into crop-producing areas were very similar.

The families, selected by the Ministry for Internal Colonisation, were allocated to a new house on the plot of land that the family had to cultivate.

Central to these plots were the regime-built settlements, or villages, providing all necessary administrative functions – such as the House of the Fascist party, the municipality, the school, the market. Each family was required to repay the costs of their house and plot within about 30 years, thereby becoming the owner of both within one generation.

The settlers usually spent all their time cultivating their crops and taking care of their animals and only visited the village (or settlement) for Sunday Mass, or for special occasions, such as religious or political events.

These new towns and settlements materialized as absolute acts of creation. The imposition of urban design on a territory considered empty can be considered as the ultimate inception of a concept - theoretical, formal, and political - which was planned to definitively change the space and contribute to the building of a political ideology.

The main message was that of power: the buildings and town planning created by the Fascist state offered the perfect background for political propaganda, showing the tight bond between ideology and its physical representation.

Both in Libya and in the Pontine Plain an analysis of the urban planning and forms at the settlements’ cores clearly reveals the theatrical function of the buildings: the main design of the new towns and settlements is based on a central square, the piazza, considered

as a theatre for Fascist propaganda, as a gathering place for the settlers, and as their main source of identity in their new homeland.

The buildings seem in fact to totally lose their formal connotations due to their function, becoming a more or less homogeneous coulisse for the central empty space. The square was usually planned as a sort of modern forum, where the main collective institutions were concen- trated. While balancing between the Roman past, a certain vernacular authenticity, and idealized visions of the future, “past” and “future”

were equally subject to a process of fictionalization, which produced what we can call modernist urban scenes.

The Afterlife

What happened after the end of Fascism? What remains of the original

“Fascist play”? Are the new actors so different from the original ones?

And, shifting the focus to the single original functions of the buildings, what is the role of the buildings today now that they are no longer used according to their original political functions?

After the fall of the Fascist regime, the Pontine Plain developed economically in a complex equilibrium of agrarian crop production, tourism, and small industries. In many cases, the central village square remained the only space providing a fundamental social role for the inhabitants: hosting weekly markets and providing cafes and sitting areas. In the case of Pontinia, Indian Sikhs now populate the square with a mix of women, children and young boys who seem to repeat the initial epoch of agrarian colonization.

Italian colonial rule in Libya ended in 1947, but many Italian families remained until the 1970 coup by Gaddafi when all Italians were forced to leave the country. The colonial design of the territory, however, endured after the end of colonialism: the Italian families who

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remained in the country until 1970 continued to cultivate the land and live in their single dwellings, which, after they left, were taken over by the Libyan population who moved into the empty buildings, readapting and reusing both the single dwellings and the administrative buildings in the settlements (source: fieldwork 2009).⁸

The Reuse of Architecture and Town Planning

In Pontinia the private dwellings remain private, mainly inhabited by descendants of the initial settlers (second and third generation).

Functional changes have been made: animal accommodation has generally been transformed into living space and inside toilets replace the original ones that were built outside, but the original overall shape is still recognizable.

The situation is more controversial when we consider the buildings which form the core of the settlements. Functional buildings such as the post office and the cinema are still in use today, updated but providing the same function as they did originally.

The role of some official buildings, however, even if changed, still remain related to political administration and control: the old municipality still functions as the political-administrative seat, the former house of the Fascist party is today a police station, with several administrative offices.

In Pontinia there was no conscious critical re-appropriation of the Fascist architecture. Agamben talks about “profanation”, in the sense of leaving the buildings and spaces to be used in line with their physical shapes, muting the meanings, the symbolism and the messages they originally contained.⁹ In this sense, we can affirm that the buildings in Pontinia have not been profaned. Walking around the city center one could still be in the 1930s since many of the old

Fascist symbols are still in place: the city's motto is engraved at the top of the municipal tower, and the letter "M" and fasci littori can be spotted around the town.

This is perhaps surprising, but not illogical. The current institutions – the municipality, the police station etc. – took over not only the spaces left empty after Fascism but also the particular connotations of that architecture. Its distinctive flair derives from a subtle combination of the general urban shape, the relations of power in the square, the dominance of those buildings within the urban design, and finally the design of the buildings themselves, thanks to the presence of towers, the use of precious distinctive materials and the studied symmetry or asymmetry of the façades.

The reoccupation of these formerly key political buildings synthesizes the supremacy of the state today.¹⁰

The same type of appropriation also took place in Libya under Gaddafi.

Taking Tripoli as a prime example, the buildings realized under Italian occupation for state purposes have been completely and without major modifications taken over by the ruling power: Gaddafi’s regime frankly embraced the messages of the colonial buildings, appro- priating their charisma and their image of power. The grand scale of some Fascist structures, and the use of precious materials and decorations, perfectly fitted the new absolutist ruling power. In Tripoli, as in the new towns of the Pontine Plain, it is their position in the urban layout which transmits a clear message of control which was easily reused: it is not the individual buildings, but the whole urban scheme, the overall Fascist design, which should be seen as an unas- sailable demonstration of state supremacy and control. In Tripoli the process of decolonization was not synonymous with democratization;

Fig.4: The rural settlement Maddalena, today Al-‘Awilya, Cyrenaica, Libya.

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on the contrary, a new form of authority simply replaced the old one.¹¹ Finally, considering that the connotation of power is visible not only in the architecture but also, and much more strongly, in the urban layout, what can be done to decolonize the town planning?

It is surely misleading to describe these types of Fascist town planning as Metafisic – as is happening for several new towns and urban layouts in northern Italy.¹² It is definitely too hasty and too superficial. The metaphysical paintings usually used as a formal reference, such as those by De Chirico, Carra, Sironi etc., make it possible to get in touch with a second or third level of messages and significances, beyond any physical or practical materiality.

The buildings built during the Fascist era and embedded in the urban landscapes they generated show exactly the contrary: they communicate power, control and the supremacy of the ruling institutions, as much today as they did during the time of the Fascist dicta- torship.

Instead of trying to overcome the problem by attaching apparently innocuous labels, it would be much more useful to reflect on how best to contextualize this architecture, presenting the historical moment as the reason for the urban shape and building design.

So how to reuse, decolonize and contextualize this architecture and – even more importantly – this urban design?

With a group of architecture students from the Politecnico di Milano and the Technical University of Berlin, we reflected on this question

during ten days of fieldwork in Pontinia.¹³ The students researched and analyzed the landscape of a strip of land including Pontinia between the mountains and the sea, to better understand the hydraulic system of the area and how the morphological situation influenced the planning of the network of dwellings, borghi and villages.¹⁴

Different topics were mapped, the exercise of mapping (recording, registering and uncovering) being aimed at a better understan- ding of the area, and qualitative semi-structured interviews with some of the inhabitants were carried out. The main subject of the interviews was the interviewees' personal relationship with the architecture, town planning, and the symbols of Fascism.

One elderly gentleman explained his negative opinion: "It was a dicta- torship", whereas, one younger woman said: "Mussolini gave us a lot of lands and he was good for the Italian economy and for the country, and we are grateful to him.”¹⁵

“I'm proud of being from Pontinia. In fact, it is a place born out of nothing, it does not matter if he did it or if somebody else did it. In fact our fathers, our grandparents did it. At that time there was that ideology. It’s not my job to say whether it was right or wrong. I do not understand anything about politics. My mother did not see it as black like everybody else. Maybe my father, when he heard the news he was angry with everyone, like today, but there was not a clear and precise idea.”¹⁶

“This floor of our theatre [tiled with the geometric shape of the fascio littorio], whether we like it or not, it is part of our history.”

Fig. 5: The a building of Pontinia.

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“Without Mussolini Agropontino would be a mess. Only he was capable of boosting the area.”

In general, people's behavior portrays a sense of being unrelated to the big history of Fascism. People are proud of the Pontine Plain, they consider everything to be the product of their own work, but seem to have no personal relationship with either Fascism or politics in general. As Roberta Pergher documents in her recent book on Fascist settlements: “The settlers at the same time became subjects of the state with little leeway to shape their own course, a fact which later allowed them to detach themselves more easily from responsi- bility for the regime’s injustices and crimes.”¹⁷

I observed the same sort of detachment regarding the architecture:

in many cases, people showed a passive attitude towards the architecture and the symbols of the regime and seemed not to care about their meanings. This is not due to ignorance, everyone knows the history of Pontinia, it is more about a general inattention in a wider sense to the intrinsic message contained in these symbols and the values they endorsed, not only in the past but even today.

Some Preliminary Conclusions

In Pontinia the buildings related to power are now being used by the state. Other functional buildings are still in use with the same original function, such as the cinema, the post office, and some shops. Other buildings lost their initial function and relevance after the war and are empty, such as the casa del dopolavoro. No major historical revisionism was carried out when the Fascist era ended and no political and historical contextualization is visible in Pontinia today.¹⁸ Buildings are reused, occupied and changed according to spontaneous needs and no coherent critical awareness of the meanings and symbols of the

regime has been created. The activity of the recently opened MAP Museo Agro Pontino is a promising start, but it is probably too elitist and too sporadic to make any real impact.¹⁹

As discussed in this paper, a process of historical revision should include not only individual buildings but also Fascist town planning, the layout of the town core and probably the design of the landscape of the entire Pontine Plain. In this sense, the questions around decolonizing should address not just the individual symbols and structures, but the whole urban design of the area.

Would this be enough to inform, explain, and critically comment on the past?

This question has no precise answer and needs to be just the beginning of a process which should be open, inclusive, and participatory for all the inhabitants of the area: decolonizing, contextualizing and critically thinking about the historical background should be, in the Pontine Plain, in Italy and in its former colonies, of primary importance.²⁰ This work was conducted under the project MODSCAPES - Modernist Reinventions of the Rural Landscape (HERA.15.097).

This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 649307.

Fig. 6: Tripoli, Libya, the two former colonial buildings which mark the entrance to Omar Almukhat Road facing the former Green Square, today Martyr’s Square. In 2009 the building on the left side was the national bank and that one on the right side was the main police station. The picture was taken after the end of the celebration for Gaddafi’s coup.

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the 27th of April and the 6th of May 2018. The fieldwork was the initial phase of a semester long design studio which the students carried on in their respective faculties. https://modscapes.eu/design-studio-the-pontine-plain-tuberlin/ [accessed on December 11, 2018].

[14] A borgo, or hamlet, is an urban node smaller than a village. It provides only strictly necessary facilities for the neighbouring dwellings.

[15] This information was reported in the research by the group of students composed by Andrej Klußmann, Anna Sadaei, Petar Rajevic and Mona Schmid, TUB.

[16] These last three interviews with inhabitants of Pontinia were carried out by myself during the DAAD workshop in April 2018.

[17] Pergher, 118.

[18] In Sabaudia plaques have been placed on the facades of some meaningful buildings, but these record only simple objective data such as the original function of the building and the name of the architect, with no critical commentary regarding the political message and intrinsic meaning that the building and its urban layout represents.

[19] The MAP opened in December 2011.The museum presents material from the original collection of the Museo della Malaria as well as other items to explain the Pontine Plain from Roman times, with a particular focus on the Fascist era. Of interest are the public activities and cooperation with artists, aimed at focussing on the current problems of the area, such as the situation of the Indian Sikh community.

[20] In 2017 the city of Asmara was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1550/ [accessed on December 11, 2018]. The colonial planning of the city is described as modern and rationalist and any reference to Fascism is avoided.

Image Credits

Fig. 1: Photography Vittoria Capresi Fig. 2: Photography Vittoria Capresi Fig. 3: Libia, n. 6, Juli 1939, 24.

Fig. 4: Photography Vittoria Capresi Fig. 5: Photography Amine Mashhadireza Fig. 6: Photography Vittoria Capresi

Bibliograhpy

Giorgio Agamben, Profanazioni, Roma, Nottetempo, 2005.

Vittoria Capresi, L’utopia costruita: i centri rurali di fondazione in Libia (1934-1940).

The built utopia: the Italian rural centres founded in colonial Libya (1934-1940), Bologna, Bononia University Press, 2009.

Antonio Pennacchi, Fascio e martello: viaggio per le città del duce, Roma [etc.], GLF editori Laterza, 2008.

Roberta Pergher, Mussolini’s Nation-Empire Sovereignty and Settlement in Italy’s Borderlands, 1922-1943, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2017.

James C Scott, Seeing like the State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1998.

Daniela Spiegel, Die città nuove des agro pontino im Rahmen der faschistischen Staatsarchitektur, Petersberg, Michael Imhof Verlag, 2010.

Notes

[1] “Why are so many Fascist Monuments still standing in Italy” dated October 5, 2017, accessed on December 11, 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture- desk/why-are-so-many-fascist-monuments-still-standing-in-italy.

[2] Decolonisation is used here according to the formulation of Alessandro Petti. See:

http://www.decolonizing.ps/site/ [accessed on December 11, 2018].

[3] Both the following case studies are my subject of investigation for the project MODSCAPES Modernist Reinvention of the Rural Landscape, a EU-Hera funded project (2016-2019) modscapes.eu [accessed on December 11, 2018].

[4] The political aim was to avoid mass migration to the cities and obtain mass consensus by proclaiming to fight unemployment. See the researches by Nicola Labanca and Claudio Segrè.

[5] The project of internal colonisation of the Pontine Plain was the object of a massive press campaign, carried out both in the national and international press and on newsreels. For an extensive analysis of the project, see Daniela Spiegel, Die città

nuove des agro pontino im Rahmen der faschistischen Staatsarchitektur, Petersberg, Michael Imhof Verlag, 2010.

[6] Roberta Pergher, Mussolini’s Nation-Empire Sovereignty and Settlement in Italy’s Borderlands, 1922-1943, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2017.

[7] The programme launched by Italo Balbo for the Libyan population will not be further investigated in this paper. For a detailed description of its aims, implementation phases etc. see Vittoria Capresi, L’utopia costruita: i centri rurali di fondazione in Libia (1934-1940). The built utopia: the Italian rural centres founded in colonial Libya (1934-1940), Bologna, Bononia University Press, 2009.

[8] Vittoria Capresi, “Continuité et rupture. Les centres ruraux d’origine fasciste en Libye pendant la période colonial et aujourd’hui”, in: E. Godoli, S. Finzi, M. Giacomelli, A. Saadaoui (Hgs.), Proceedings of the conference Architectures et architects Italiens au Maghreb, Polistampa, Florenz 2011, 174-185.

[9] Giorgio Agamben, Profanazioni, Roma, Nottetempo, 2005.

[10] For this reason the fashion house Fendi moved its Rome headquarters in the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana to EUR. It is all about using the strong iconic power of the building, taking advantage of the architecture and its urban position.

[11] See Vittoria Capresi, “Eredità e permanenze del colonialismo italiano in Libia.

Continuità negli interventi urbani / architettura / simbolo”, in: V. Capresi, C. Jelidi (Hgs.) Formes territoriales, urbaines et architecturales au Maghreb aux XIX-XXIe siècle. Permanences au ruptures?, Tunis, IRMC, 2012, 207-219.

[12] This is the case for example in Tresigallo: the marketing for the city is investing in a complete removal of its political past https://www.tresigallolacittametafisica.it/

[accessed on December 11, 2018].

[13] The project was fully financed by the DAAD – German Academic Exchange Program, Hochschuldialogue mit Südeuropa, a cooperation between the Habitat Unit at the TUB (Vittoria Capresi and Aine Ryan) with the Politecnico of Milano (Cristina Pallini and Aleksa Korolija) and the Free University of Berlin (Irmgard Zündorf), the Municipality of Pontinia and the Museo Agro Pontino – MAP. It took place between

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Federal University of Juiz de Fora Master student Federal University of Minas Gerais

Throughout his graduation he participated in several research and extension programs, working in the areas of heritage, memory and architectural design. During 2014/2015 he was a BA Architecture student at Leeds Beckett University - Leeds, England. He has great interest in the areas of Architecture and Urbanism, Social Memory, Cultural Heritage and Environmental Psychology.

Culture and Communication, Federal University of Juiz de Fora

Fernanda Freitas was involved in several universities programs, in tutoring and research in ambient analysis, history, urbanism and interior design. Fernanda Freitas studied at Algarve University in Portugal for one semester and has been a part of the “Spatial Poetry - An Phenomenological Approach” summer course in Bauhaus- Weimar Universität, both in 2017. The focus of her actual research is cultural heritage, architecture and perception, themes that were present in other published works.

Graduated in "Architecture and Urbanism" (UFJF). Adjunct Professor of the Department of Design, History and Theory of the Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism (UFJF), set of subjects History and Theory of Architecture and Urbanism, Landscape Design, Architecture and Urbanism Project. Connected to Laboratories: Laboratory of Theater and Memory Space Studies (UNIRIO) and DOMVS-Research Laboratory in Architecture, Urbanism and Landscape (FAU / UFJF).

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Are we Modern in a Liquid World?

A Latin American Perspective

Abstract

The main theme of this work is to question the permanence of the concepts and languages of the Modern Movement in the daily life of cities and, consequently, its uses and perceptions, considering the current modern-liquid world in which we live, from a Latin American perspective. It goes through studies of society and the present cities seeking to understand the liquid complexities we are experiencing, in addition to the multiple layers of cities and urban networks, having as a theoretical reference the work of Zygmunt Bauman. The present work gives a brief overview of the daily permanence of the Modern Movement from Europe to Latin America. It is illustrated by two case

studies: one related to the recent collapse of the Wilton Paes de Almeida building in the center of the city of São Paulo; and the other an analytical case study of the film "Medianeras" that exposes the solitude of the individual in present-day Buenos Aires. It is concluded that the Modern Movement still has outstanding characteristics that define how the inhabitants live within the cities. Moreover, in view of the modern-liquid world, certain characteristics such as solitude, non-permanence, and non-recognition of others as individuals have been exposed reinforcing other social and urban facts made by the Modern Movement.

Fig. 1: São Paulo

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Introduction

The Modern Movement has roots in the transition from the 19th to 20th century, and for some authors, it was surpassed in the second half of the last century. In the context of Latin America, this Movement only appears in the 1930s, adopting European concepts with local adaptations that created a Latin American modernist identity. Considering that the implementation of modernist concepts happened during the surge of urban centers, it is still possible to experience in present times the consequences of the early modernist choices and projects.

The question in the title aims to create a dialogue and connections between the contemporary liquidity inserted in the Latin American cities, and the modernist ideals of the last century placed in their conception. In addition, these two factors of the equation complement each other and help to understand the society and the urban space nowadays.

This dialogue will be illustrated by two case studies that seek to make this transposition of European modernism more realistic and comprehensible within the Latin American scenario, with its adaptations and consequences in the contemporary world. The first example refers to the fire and collapse of the Wilton Paes de Almeida building in the city center of São Paulo. It shows how the urban sprawl and land occupation, that was planned with modernist urban principles, with the desertification of the center, depict part of the liquid experience that nowadays society is witnessing.

The second example deals with the Argentinian film Medianeras¹, by Gustavo Taretto, which adds the representation of a closer look of the individual living in the liquid contemporary city and creating interpersonal relations that receive influences from technology, consumer systems,

modernist urbanism and the very shape of contemporary society.

The objective of this work is to examine the dynamics and experience of the contemporary cities formed at the peak of the Modern Movement contextualized in Latin America.

Modern movement in Latin America

The Modern Movement in architecture emerged in Europe in the late 19th century as a consequence of various social and political transformations. With these events, an atmosphere of innovation and transformation was created in society, whether in living conditions, in social extracts or in the urban environment. Its principles had strong functionalist and technicist influences based on looking to the future to provide quality in the present and, for that reason, the rupture with the past and its traditions mark the movement².

Modernist ideas - their proposals of rupture, ideals of design, and visions of a city - only reached Latin America with greater strength and presence in the 20th century. At that time, South America lived in a social, economic and political context that was still highly agriculture- based, far away from the smog of the large European industries.

In this context, the modernist landmark takes place at the Mo- dern Art Week of 1922, in São Paulo, headed by intellectuals such as Tarsila do Amaral and Oswald de Andrade. This moment is marked by anthropophagy³, that is, deep studies and con- sumption of the Brazilian cultural roots, especially indigenous and tropical, mixed with the international modernist currents.

Latin American modernity gained international attention with the 1943 exhibition by Brazil's New and Old Architecture, built by MoMa (Museum of Modern Art) in New York, which was already re- aping modernist fruits of post-war European migratory processes.

Fig. 2: Buenos Aires